The Cat's Meow wrote:I seem to remember my abuser smothering me with a pillow until I passed out on multiple occasions and waking up to him abusing me. But if he had actually done that, he would have run the serious risk of going too far and actually killing me.
You are thinking like a normal human, not a psychopath. It could be anything - I have dealt with water, pillows, trying to be quiet and hiding - trying not to breath, locked in a tiny space, hand over your mouth and nose - any of these and more can bring on that horrible feeling! - even a heavy body on top of you could make it hard to breath.
For me - many alters have had the problem of not being able to breath. Some were tortured by water, others were suffocated - but only one actually died. My first alter ever! This is a very young alter - just 3 months old, so of course the memory is not perfect, but the little one died from not being able to breath and had extreme fear of Father. This same pattern of abuse continued into our teen years.
In my case - Near suffocation seems to be a pattern that Father followed. My Father was not ashamed of what he did. He admitted many things before he died and even appeared proud of them.
The Cat's Meow wrote:I am just wondering how other people also deal with the doubts that the more extreme types of abuse bring up? It's hard, because even everyday memory isn't like a video recording- things get distorted all of the time and we don't even really worry about it.
It does not matter. What matters is what YOU think happened. This is the memory you need to process. Reality has nothing to do with healing. You might be correct, you might be wrong - it does not matter. What matters is getting better - unless I suppose you are out to blame or sue your abusers.
From my journal
March 9th, 2012Smothered by a Pillow at 3-4 Months Old until dead.
Was Dead, but now found and with us: Archespore [ahr-kuh-spawr]
Things are getting clearer. I was so young. It's hard to sort out, but the same terror that was felt at about 3 months of age, continued through my childhood and my early teen years. It's this feeling that never went away. A feeling that Father kept taking everything, even our last breath. It's been a horrible day. My head is bursting and I feel like I am burning up. I get sick to my stomach on and off. This is the same feeling many alters above are going through today. The ones that suffered this type of abuse now have magic skin so they can breath anywhere and Father is tied up in Grandma's house (a readjustment to their memory) where no one will find him. He cannot hurt any of these babies. I don't think it's memory by a particular part that is going on. It feels like a consensus by the system as to what has happened. I think it's like an elder, passing down stories for centuries. I am still not sure how it works, but my parts do know what happened.
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This is something that my T just sent me this morning that might help make things clear.
1. We do this so we can process memories efficiently. Early ones tend to "leak" distress into later ones, so taking care of them first makes the later ones easier/quicker to remove from the list.
2. "Removal" from the list means either [a] the memory no longer causes any more distress to you than if you were hearing someone else's story (this is the end point for virtually all memories we process), OR [b] we're removed all we can, and what's left is essentially "hardwired", and becomes a candidate for ongoing stress-management (as I've said, I have a memory of this sort which crops up from time to time - but less often all the time). Memories of this type CAN be affectively (and effectively!) "defused", but the effect, unlike memories of type "a", tends to be temporary, such that in a few days/weeks you will find they are able once again to cause you distress when triggered.
3. Type "b" memories tend to be rather non-specific, in part because they are always from very early childhood, and tend to be about the universe in general - e.g., "mother wasn't safe", or "I was essentially alone", or "I had nowhere to hide". They are more global then specific, and are rarely if ever about any specific events. They are also effectively managed by constructing for oneself, post-therapy, a good life with a good social support network and meaningful work that you want to do every day. This is a variation of that old saying: "Living well is the best revenge" - a rewrite might be "living well is the best remedy".
4. Memory mapping is always incomplete. That's not much of a problem, for a couple of reasons: [a] If a memory is really traumatic, it will show up in your life at one point or another, and we can resolve it at that time, and [b] usually (but certainly not always), "lost" memories will pop up in the course of processing those you do recall. The brain very much tends to go where it needs to go, when doing trauma memory processing.
All of this basically is intended to be reassuring. This process works amazingly well, if not always perfectly. "Perfect" turns out to be unnecessary. "Very good" is simply wonderful, especially compared to how things were before trauma processing began.
by sev0n » Fri Jun 01, 2012 5:31 pm 
If something I said brought up a question for Borg! That is good. I sent Borg a PM.
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